Tag: crash

Five U.S. Marines were missing after two Marine Corps aircraft collided in mid-air and crashed into the sea off the coast of Japan on Thursday, in what U.S. officials said may have been a refueling exercise gone wrong. A series of emergency landings and parts falling from U.S. military aircraft have highlighted safety concerns. The Marine Corps said in a statement the incident occurred around 2 a.m. local time in Japan (1700 GMT Wednesday) about 200 miles off the Japanese coast. The two aircraft

Five U.S. Marines were missing after two Marine Corps aircraft collided in mid-air and crashed into the sea off the coast of Japan on Thursday, in what U.S. officials said may have been a refueling exercise gone wrong.

Japan’s defense ministry said its maritime forces had so far found two of the seven Marines who were aboard the aircraft — an F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet and KC-130 Hercules — at the time of the incident.

One was in a stable condition at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, while the second had been found about 10 hours after the collision and brought aboard a Japanese military vessel, the ministry said. No other details about the second Marine were known, a ministry spokesman said.

Search and rescue efforts for the remaining five continued.

The incident adds to a growing list of U.S. military aviation accidents around the world in recent years, prompting hearings in Congress to address the rise.

The Military Times reported earlier this year that aviation accidents jumped nearly 40 percent from fiscal years 2013 to 2017. At least 133 service members were killed in those incidents, it said.

U.S. military accidents are a sensitive topic in Japan, particularly for residents of the southern prefecture of Okinawa, which is home to the bulk of the U.S. presence in the country. A series of emergency landings and parts falling from U.S. military aircraft have highlighted safety concerns.

“The incident is regrettable, but our focus at the moment is on search and rescue,” Japanese Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya told a news conference. “Japan will respond appropriately once the details of the incident are uncovered.”

The Marine Corps said in a statement the incident occurred around 2 a.m. local time in Japan (1700 GMT Wednesday) about 200 miles off the Japanese coast.

The two aircraft had launched from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni and were conducting regular training when there was a “mishap,” the Marine Corps said.

The Marine Corps did not elaborate on the nature of the incident. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it occurred during a refueling exercise.

Officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity were unsure precisely how the mishap occurred but none suspected foul play. An investigation has begun.

Indonesian investigators said on Wednesday a Lion Air Boeing 737 jet that plunged into the sea, killing 189 people onboard, was not airworthy on a flight the day before it crashed on Oct. 29. The pilot of the Oct. 28 flight chose to press on to Jakarta after shutting down the plane’s anti-stall system, Utomo said. “This is the basis of our recommendation to Lion Air. During the early morning flight, one of the pilots asked flight controllers to confirm the altitude and speed of the aircraft. The

Indonesian investigators said on Wednesday a Lion Air Boeing 737 jet that plunged into the sea, killing 189 people onboard, was not airworthy on a flight the day before it crashed on Oct. 29.

The Oct. 28 flight from Bali to Jakarta had experienced similar technical issues to the doomed flight the next day from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang, said Nurcahyo Utomo, head of Indonesia’s national transport safety committee (KNKT).

The pilot of the Oct. 28 flight chose to press on to Jakarta after shutting down the plane’s anti-stall system, Utomo said.

“This is the basis of our recommendation to Lion Air. In our view, the plane was not airworthy,” he told a news conference in Jakarta.

Ahead of the release of its first report, the committee gave more details on the problems the pilots faced in controlling the plane before it crashed.

During the early morning flight, one of the pilots asked flight controllers to confirm the altitude and speed of the aircraft.

The pilot then reported that they were experiencing a “flight control problem,” the statement said.

Last week, KNKT investigator Nurcahyo Utomo told parliament that the jet’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) – an automated modification new to the model that crashed – activated and directed the jet’s nose down to prevent a stall.

The jet’s systems had detected it was in a stall due to a faulty indicator and gave the captain a warning through a “stick shaker” that vibrated the controls, he said.

Pilots flying the same plane a day earlier had experienced a similar problem until they used switches to shut off the system, KNKT said in its statement on Wednesday.

The agency recommended that Lion Air improve its safety culture to ensure that a pilot can make proper decisions to continue a flight.

The investigation into the crash is in its early stages and is hampered by the lack of evidence from the cockpit voice recorder, which remains lost on the seabed.

KNKT has not yet said what caused the crash and the recommendations are an indication of areas of focus, but not necessarily the ultimate cause.

On Wednesday, KNKT acknowledged actions to improve safety had been taken by Boeing, Lion Air, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Indonesia’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

At Indonesia’s request, Boeing issued an advisory about MCAS to airlines earlier this month. That was quickly followed by a U.S. Federal Aviation Administration directive making that mandatory.

Boeing shares rose Wednesday after a preliminary report from Indonesia investigators said the Lion Air 737 plane “was not airworthy” before its fateful flight. Investigators are now looking at potential maintenance mistakes that may have led to the Oct. 29 crash that killed 189 people, according to The Wall Street Journal. “The logs indicate that various maintenance procedures were performed, but issues related to airspeed and altitude continued on each successive flight.” The company’s shares h

Boeing shares rose Wednesday after a preliminary report from Indonesia investigators said the Lion Air 737 plane “was not airworthy” before its fateful flight.

Investigators are now looking at potential maintenance mistakes that may have led to the Oct. 29 crash that killed 189 people, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A pilot flying the jet the day before the crash chose to press on after shutting down the plane’s anti-stall system, Nurcahyo Utomo, head of Indonesia’s national transport safety committee, said at a news conference. Boeing further described the investigators’ initial findings in a statement.

“The report explains that the maintenance logs for the accident aircraft recorded problems related to airspeed and altitude on each of the four flights that occurred over the three days prior to Flight 610,” Boeing said. “The logs indicate that various maintenance procedures were performed, but issues related to airspeed and altitude continued on each successive flight.”

Boeing’s stock rose 1.7 percent Wednesday. The company’s shares had slid steadily since the crash, down more than 8 percent this month.

The Journal report said investigators suspect maintenance mistakes in the days before the crash may have led to the unexpected series of events that sent the plane in a steep dive into the Java Sea. Indonesian investigators said Wednesday they were looking at those maintenance actions.

Following the Lion Air plane’s flight the previous day, Boeing said “the pilot reported some of the experienced issues both on the aircraft maintenance log and to engineering.”

“The report states that the pilot ran the runaway stabilizer non-normal check list, but it does not state that he communicated that fact in the maintenance documentation following that flight,” Boeing said.

A final report is expected in the coming months but the investigation continues to be hampered by the missing cockpit voice recorder, which sank to the floor of the Java Sea after the crash.

Even as cryptocurrencies are getting crushed, Amazon sees plenty of opportunity with blockchain technology. Blockchain is a software protocol that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Amazon’s new product will support two popular existing blockchain platforms — Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. Ethereum is a popular open-source building platform for developers, linked to the cryptocurrency ether, while corporate giants including IBM are currently building projects on Hyperledger. Jassy said A

Even as cryptocurrencies are getting crushed, Amazon sees plenty of opportunity with blockchain technology.

The company said on Wednesday that it’s introducing two new services, including a managed blockchain offering, to let Amazon Web Services customers set up “a scalable blockchain network with just a few clicks” that “automatically scales to meet the demands of thousands of applications running millions of transactions.”

Blockchain is a software protocol that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Also called distributed ledger technology, its potential has been compared to the internet — but the hype has outpaced reality. Outside of cryptocurrencies, few commercially viable products have been built on blockchain to date, and crypto prices have plunged, with bitcoin losing almost 70 percent of its value in 2018. Meanwhile, Cowen estimates it will take almost six years for blockchain to gain widespread adoption.

Amazon’s new product will support two popular existing blockchain platforms — Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. Ethereum is a popular open-source building platform for developers, linked to the cryptocurrency ether, while corporate giants including IBM are currently building projects on Hyperledger.

“We don’t build things for optics,” AWS CEO Andy Jassy said on Wednesday at the company’s re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Jassy said AWS only spends resources on something when they “understand the problem” and said, “this is something that a lot of companies need.”

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing are evaluating the need for software or design changes to 737 MAX jets in the wake of last month’s deadly Lion Air crash in Indonesia, the regulator said on Tuesday. They called for more training for 737 MAX pilots. Operating procedures and training for the 737 MAX could also change as the FAA and Boeing learn more from the investigation, the regulator said in a statement. Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg told Fox Business Network on Tu

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing are evaluating the need for software or design changes to 737 MAX jets in the wake of last month’s deadly Lion Air crash in Indonesia, the regulator said on Tuesday.

Boeing shares fell 2.1 percent on Tuesday on concerns related to the first crash of the newest version of the planemaker’s best-selling jet, in which all 189 people on board were killed when it dived into the sea.

Indonesian investigators said on Monday a system designed to deal with the accident scenario was not described in the flight manual. They called for more training for 737 MAX pilots.

U.S. pilot unions later said they were not aware of the new anti-stall system.

Operating procedures and training for the 737 MAX could also change as the FAA and Boeing learn more from the investigation, the regulator said in a statement.

Investigators are preparing to publish their preliminary report on the crash on Nov. 28 or Nov. 29, one month after the Lion Air jet crashed at high speed into the Java Sea.

Until now, public attention has focused mainly on potential maintenance problems including a faulty sensor for the ‘angle of attack,’ a vital piece of data needed to help the aircraft fly at the right angle to the currents of air and prevent a stall.

The focus of the investigation appears to be expanding to the clarity of U.S.-approved procedures to help pilots prevent the 737 MAX from over-reacting to such a data loss, and methods for training them.

Information recovered from the jet’s data recorder last week led the FAA to issue an emergency directive warning pilots that a computer on the 737 MAX could force the plane to descend sharply for up to 10 seconds even in manual flight, making it difficult for a pilot to control the aircraft.

Pilots can stop this automated response by pressing two buttons if the system behaves unexpectedly, the directive said.

But questions have been raised about how well pilots are prepared for such an automatic reaction and how much time they have to respond.

Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg told Fox Business Network on Tuesday that Boeing provides “all of the information that’s needed to safely fly our airplanes” and that the 737 MAX was a “very safe” airplane.

“This comes out of thousands of hours of testing and evaluating and simulating and providing the information that our pilots need to operate our airplanes safely,” Muilenburg said.

“In certain failure modes, if there’s an inaccurate angle of attack sensor feeding information to the airplane, there’s a procedure to handle that,” he added.

The FAA on Tuesday denied a report that it had launched a new probe into the safety analyses carried out by Boeing on the 737 MAX.

Boeing, the world’s largest planemaker, said earlier on Tuesday it delivered 43 of its 737 aircraft last month, up from 37 a year ago, helped by a booming global market.

The number of 737 deliveries was down slightly from the 61 delivered in September due to lingering supplier problems, flagged by a Boeing executive last week.

Boeing failed to warn the airline industry about a potentially dangerous feature in its a new flight-control system that is suspected of playing a role in the fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia last month, The Wall Street Journal reported late on Monday. That aircraft feature is the automated stall-prevention system found on Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 models, the Journal reported, citing industry sources including safety experts, aviation regulators and airline pilots. Boeing revealed the possibl

Boeing failed to warn the airline industry about a potentially dangerous feature in its a new flight-control system that is suspected of playing a role in the fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia last month, The Wall Street Journal reported late on Monday.

That aircraft feature is the automated stall-prevention system found on Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 models, the Journal reported, citing industry sources including safety experts, aviation regulators and airline pilots.

Boeing didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment. The company told the Journal that it is “taking every measure to fully understand all aspects of this incident, working closely with the investigating team and all regulatory authorities involved.”

The system in question is designed to help pilots avoid raising a plane’s nose too high, which can cause it to stall, according to the report. The potential fault in the system is that it can push the plane’s nose down “unexpectedly and so strongly” that pilots can’t pull it back up even when flying manually, the report said. It added that when that happens, the plane could dive or crash.

Boeing revealed the possible fault in a bulletin to airlines about a week after the Lion Air crash, the report indicated.

Lion Air’s new Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed into the Java Sea last month shortly after taking off from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport. The plane was carrying 189 people, including crew.

For the full report on Boeing’s flight control feature, read The Wall Street Journal.

Indonesia’s military chief believes that the body of the crashed Lion Air plane has been found, Reuters reported Wednesday. He added that the search team had the location coordinates of the wreckage but was trying to confirm that it was indeed the fuselage. Indonesia deployed divers to search for the plane and is also using “pinger locators” to zero in on the aircraft’s cockpit recorders. Indonesian transportation officials have said Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 planes will not be grounded, despite uncert

Indonesia’s military chief believes that the body of the crashed Lion Air plane has been found, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Hadi Tjahjanto told a local television channel that a search and rescue team had found what appeared to be “a part of the fuselage of JT610,” referring to the flight operated by Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air, according to the news agency.

He added that the search team had the location coordinates of the wreckage but was trying to confirm that it was indeed the fuselage.

The aircraft carrying 189 people, including crew, from Jakarta crashed into the sea off the island of Java on Monday, shortly after take-off. Officials have said they are not expecting any survivors.

A transport safety official also said that the team looking for the crashed aircraft heard a ping sound late on Tuesday and divers were set to check the site Wednesday morning, Reuters reported.

Transportation and safety officials have been searching for voice and data recorders and other clues to determine the cause of the crash of Lion Air’s brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet. It was the first accident of its kind for the variant of the top-selling plane.

Indonesia deployed divers to search for the plane and is also using “pinger locators” to zero in on the aircraft’s cockpit recorders.

Reuters said a witness on a boat at the crash site on Tuesday saw about 60 divers scattered in inflatable boats over slightly choppy waters entering the sea, which is about 35 meters (115 feet) deep. In all, 35 vessels are helping in the search, according to the news agency.

Earlier, Yusuf Latif, the spokesman of the national search and rescue agency, said there were unlikely to be survivors. In a statement, Lion Air said human remains had been collected in 24 body bags after sweeps of the crash site, which is about nine miles off the coast to the northeast of Jakarta. If all aboard have died, the crash will be its second-worst air disaster since 1997, industry experts said. Privately owned Lion Air said the aircraft, which had been in operation since August, was ai

Indonesia on Tuesday stepped up its search for passengers of an airliner that plunged into the sea, deploying underwater beacons to trace the flight’s black box recorders in a bid to uncover why an almost-new plane crashed minutes after take-off.

There were 189 people on board flight JT610 of budget airline Lion Air when ground staff lost contact with the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft early on Monday, 13 minutes after it had left the airport in Jakarta, the capital.

“Hopefully this morning we can find the wreckage or fuselage,” Soerjanto Tjahjono, the head of Indonesia’s transport safety panel, told Reuters, adding that an underwater acoustic beacon was deployed to locate the main body of the plane.

The search and rescue agency added that four sonar detectors were also deployed in areas where aircraft debris had been found a day earlier off the shore of Karawang, West Java, and 15 vessels were scouring the sea surface.

Earlier, Yusuf Latif, the spokesman of the national search and rescue agency, said there were unlikely to be survivors.

Finding survivors “would be a miracle”, Latif added, judging by the condition of the recovered debris and body parts.

A witness in the Karawang district said he had heard an explosion from the beach around the time the aircraft went down.

“I thought it was thunder, but it was different from thunder —’Boom!’ — It was loud,” said Dadang Hambali.

In a statement, Lion Air said human remains had been collected in 24 body bags after sweeps of the crash site, which is about nine miles off the coast to the northeast of Jakarta.

Authorities told broadcaster Metro TV the bags were taken to a hospital for identification, with more expected overnight. On tarpaulins at Jakarta’s port, officers laid out items retrieved from the sea, ranging from oxygen bottles to personal effects such as wallets, a mobile telephone, cash and backpacks.

Indonesia is one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, but its safety record is patchy. If all aboard have died, the crash will be its second-worst air disaster since 1997, industry experts said.

On Monday, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board NTSB and Boeing said they were providing assistance in the crash investigation.

The accident is the first to be reported involving the widely sold Boeing 737 MAX, an updated, more fuel-efficient version of the manufacturer’s workhorse single-aisle jet.

Privately owned Lion Air said the aircraft, which had been in operation since August, was airworthy, with its pilot and co-pilot together having amassed 11,000 hours of flying time.

The pilot of flight JT610, which was bound for Pangkal Pinang in the Bangka-Belitung tin-mining region, had asked to return to base (RTB) shortly after take-off.

“An RTB was requested and had been approved but we’re still trying to figure out the reason,” Tjahjono told reporters on Monday.

No distress signal was received from the aircraft’s emergency transmitter, search and rescue agency head Muhmmad Syaugi told a news conference.

The aircraft suffered a technical problem on a flight from the resort island of Bali to Jakarta on Sunday night but it was “resolved according to procedure”, Edward Sirait, chief executive of Lion Air Group, told reporters.

Sirait declined to specify the nature of the issue but said none of the airline’s other aircraft of that model had the same problem. Lion had operated 11 Boeing 737 MAX 8s and it had no plan to ground the rest of them, he said.

Divers resumed their search in waters about 98 to 115 ft deep where the plane went down, soon after Monday’s take-off in clear weather at about 6.20 a.m., ahead of a landing set for 7.20 a.m. in the city of Pangkal Pinang.

The search had been stopped for the night, said Bambang Suryo, an official of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, although sonar vessels and an underwater drone continued hunting for the wreckage, where many victims were feared trapped.

Indonesian transportation officials have said Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 planes will not be grounded, despite uncertainty surrounding Monday’s crash of Lion Air’s brand-new jet. According to a Reuters report, the Indonesian government on Tuesday ordered an inspection of all Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplanes in the country but has stopped short of grounding the aircraft. The accident is the first to be reported involving the widely sold Boeing 737 MAX. In 2011, Lion Air ordered 230 737’s, including 201 737 MAX

Flight JT 610 crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital of Jakarta with 189 people on board. Nobody is expected to have been found alive.

According to a Reuters report, the Indonesian government on Tuesday ordered an inspection of all Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplanes in the country but has stopped short of grounding the aircraft.

The crashed plane had only been in operation since August 15 and had logged a total of 800 hours of flight time, according to Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Commission.

Lion Air has suggested that the plane had previously revealed a technical problem on a separate flight, but this had been subsequently fixed.

The accident is the first to be reported involving the widely sold Boeing 737 MAX. The single aisle jet is Boeing’s bestselling commercial aircraft. In 2011, Lion Air ordered 230 737’s, including 201 737 MAX jets, according to Boeing.

The MAX 8 has also been ordered by airlines including American Airlines, United Airlines, and FlyDubai.

Boeing said in a statement Monday that it “stands ready to provide technical assistance to the accident investigation” while the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are both sending investigators to Indonesia.

Flight JT 610 was enroute to the mining town of Pangkal Pinang on Monday when the plane suddenly lost altitude at 5,000 feet, falling into the Java Sea. Officials have said the pilot had asked to return to Soekarno-Hatta airport but then lost contact with air traffic control.

Indonesian divers have resumed searching the area on Tuesday and are using underwater “pinger locators” to try to find the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder.

Sonar vessels and an underwater drone kept up the hunt for the wreckage overnight.

Leicester City soccer club owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a Thai tycoon, was killed along with four others when his helicopter crashed and then exploded after a Premier League match on Saturday, the soccer club and police said. The father of four and founder of duty-free King Power International was a huge favorite with the club’s fans. The aircraft came down in a car park near the King Power stadium shortly after 19:30 GMT, about an hour after the end of Leicester City’s game against West Ham

Leicester City soccer club owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a Thai tycoon, was killed along with four others when his helicopter crashed and then exploded after a Premier League match on Saturday, the soccer club and police said.

Vichai bought the unheralded central England side in 2010 and went on to stun the soccer world by beating odds of 5,000/1 to win the Premier League title in 2016 in what amounted to a sporting fairy tale.

The father of four and founder of duty-free King Power International was a huge favorite with the club’s fans.

“It is with the deepest regret and a collective broken heart that we confirm our chairman, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, was among those to have tragically lost their lives on Saturday evening when a helicopter carrying him and four other people crashed outside King Power Stadium,” a club statement said on Sunday.

The aircraft came down in a car park near the King Power stadium shortly after 19:30 GMT, about an hour after the end of Leicester City’s game against West Ham United, police said.

The other victims were believed to be two members of his staff, Nursara Suknamai and Kaveporn Punpare, pilot Eric Swaffer and passenger Izabela Roza Lechowicz, Leicestershire Police said.

No one on the ground was believed to have been injured, they said.

According to witnesses, the helicopter had barely cleared the top of the stadium before it started to spin. It then plummeted to the ground and burst into flames.

John Butcher, who was near the stadium at the time of the crash, told the BBC his nephew saw the helicopter spiral out of control apparently because of a faulty rear propeller.

“Within a second, it dropped like a stone to the floor. … Luckily it did spiral for a little while and everybody sort of ran, sort of scattered.”